On November 3, 2025, Memorial University President Janet Morrison held a consultation session on the future of the Harlow Campus in the United Kingdom.
Morrison began by saying that she had recently had some one-on-one meetings with students who shared personal experiences, noting that she had heard and understood that the learning experience of Harlow is transformational.
Morrison said she had participated in two global learning experiences herself as an undergraduate and graduate student, and that these experiences were among the most impactful things she did as a learner. She added that her leadership orientation and commitment to equity, diversity, inclusivity, and anti-racism were informed by the time she spent on campuses outside of Canada, in Paris and Guadalajara.
Morrison said the challenge at Memorial right now is that the university needs to focus on academic quality and student experience, and determine what is core and central to that. She said she is not one hundred percent sure how the university arrived at its current situation, but that Memorial has outgrown its revenue.
Memorial’s operating expenses currently exceed its revenue considerably, and as enrolment is declining, the university needs to find ways, on a comparable scale, to contract expenses. Morrison said her job is to be transparent about the costs associated with the Harlow Campus and solicit feedback and input about global experience at Harlow and elsewhere.
Morrison said that Memorial has internships, research placements, and exchanges and that the administration agrees that those experiences need to continue. However, concerns around equity and accessibility of those programs due to the high expense need to be addressed.
Morrison explained that enrolment at Harlow Campus has declined significantly over the past decade in response to cost pressures for students and academic units, as well as changes in visa requirements that inhibit the ability to teach on site. The decision not to have full-term teaching on campus was not a decision by Memorial but was a reflection of changes to immigration policy in the United Kingdom.
Morrison said that at the moment, the business case, as the university contemplates revenue, expenses and the sustainability of Harlow Campus, is difficult.
She said the operating grant provided to Harlow by Memorial in 2024-25 was about $1,000,000. She said that when we talk about the current effort to cut $20 million across Memorial’s campuses, it is necessary to contemplate where those cuts are coming from. She said those cuts are happening in the classrooms and with faculty appointments.
Morrison said we need to be critical about where we’re spending every dollar. Harlow occupancies are over 150 learners at a time, but last year, it was just shy of 40 learners. However, she admitted that the pandemic had an impact. Morrison said, for argument’s sake, say it’s 100 students and the cost is a million dollars, that she considers this a significant expense, particularly if we look at it on a per student basis and said that the cost, that million dollar, is obviously not borne by these students.
She said that it is not appropriate or feasible for the cost to be borne by every student at Memorial, whether or not they have an opportunity to go to Harlow. She said the cost per student to attend Harlow to the operating budget is $25,000, which does not include what students are personally paying. The cost to facilities to provide replacement teaching or fund travel or accommodation is also not included in that number. Morrison said it is a challenge for Deans making difficult decisions about on-campus resources and expects it’s the reason for the decreased enrolment at Harlow.
Morrison said that some of the deferred maintenance has lapsed, such as the fact that there is no longer food service on that campus due to health and safety concerns. She said there is a deferred maintenance backlog of just under $2 million, and over $600,000 of that has been deemed critical.
Morrison said there are currently families budgeting $16,000 to $17,000 for Harlow for the theatre program because they don’t want their learner to be the only one who cannot go.
Morrison said she had conversations with university presidents across the country about the potential to partner with Harlow Campus, but that none of them were in a position to contribute or collaborate to a foreign campus. She said that most Canadian universities are fully divested from international campuses. She said there is a campus in the UK owned by Queen’s University, but that it has been closed for some time, and there is no plan for the deferred maintenance liability.
Morrison talked about cohort-based education and said there are students at Grenfell Campus who want to go to Germany because they met German students who were on exchange to Grenfell Campus, and their argument was that they want the same supports available for them to go to Germany as there are available to go to Harlow.
Morrison said there has been a contemplation of capitalizing the asset so Memorial could negotiate with a buyer to own the campus and hope they would maintain it for similar purposes as an accommodation but reinvest that money in an endowed account that would enable or empower students to participate in international opportunities and address some of the equity and access pieces while also diversifying where students could learn and study.
Morrison said there is a need to focus on academic quality and students’ experience, and it needs to be decided what’s most important to safeguard. She suggested that the most critical thing to safeguard is the opportunity for students to gain global experience.
When asked about former president Neil Bose violating the university’s conflict of interest policy and procedures by appointing his personal friend and co-author as Manager of Harlow, and if there will be public competitions for positions in the future, Morrison responded that Bose does not work at Memorial anymore and that the contemplation of full-time leadership at Harlow is dependent on these consultations.
Matt Barter is a graduate of the Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty at Memorial University of Newfoundland, holding a degree in Political Science with a minor in Sociology. He enjoys reading thought-provoking articles, taking walks in nature, and volunteering in the community.
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